Pupils skip millions of schooldays

Children missed nearly 4.2 million days of school during the autumn term last
year, according to alarming Government figures released on Tuesday.

By Sam Wilson and agencies

4:59PM BST 06 May 2008

The figures, published by the Department for Children, Schools and Families, showed that almost 60,000 primary and secondary school pupils skipped classes without permission on a typical day in autumn 2007, while 44,000 pupils were deemed "persistent absentees" for missing one day a week.

A further 305,000 pupils skipped nearly one in 10 lessons and "may become persistent absentees", the report suggested.

The statistics also showed that overall absence - including sickness and holidays - had increased dramatically among primary school pupils.

There was a slight fall of 0.01 percentage points in overall absence in secondary schools.

The Government sought to play down the alarming rise in truancy rates, insisting that winter bugs kept thousands of children at home during the autumn term.

Children's minister Kevin Brennan also stressed that fewer secondary school pupils were missing classes than in 2006.

He said: "The reduction of overall absence and persistent absenteeism in secondary schools shows that our policies are working."

"The emerging evidence shows the rise in absence in primary schools last autumn was largely due to illness.

"I encourage all schools to continue to focus on minimising pupil absence, to eliminate unjustified absences and to get persistent absentees back into lessons."

The Government said that that the hard core of persistent absentees represented "the major challenge we must tackle".

Almost 59,000 pupils were skipping lessons without permission on any typical day, according to an analysis of the Government's figures.

Mr Brennan said the rise in unauthorised absence was a "logical consequence" of schools taking a tougher approach against truancy.

He said: "It is no surprise when the unauthorised absence figure goes up because schools are taking a tougher stance on weak excuses they may once have authorised."

Christine Blower, acting general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, called for teachers to be given more freedom to make lessons more interesting for pupils.

She said: "The Government needs to draw the obvious lessons from the latest truancy figures. There are no magic solutions to tackling core truancy.

"Schools do their best to deal with persistent truancy but they cannot, on their own, address deep-rooted social problems which lead to truancy.

"Schools need the freedom to make the curriculum as flexible as possible in order to engage school refusers".